


The Body

by touch



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hand Jobs, M/M, Oral Sex, Stanley Uris Does Not Take A Bath, Stanley Uris Lives, how much can i ignore the canon storyline, writes fanfic for a stephen king novel and names it after a different stephen king novel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-20 06:17:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20670704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/touch/pseuds/touch
Summary: Going back to Derry stirred something in Richie’s memory he hadn’t known was there.Or, Stanley Uris reunites with Richie Tozier instead of taking a bath.





	The Body

**Author's Note:**

> I kind of incorporated elements from the book, the 1990 mini series, and the 2017/2019 movies. I make my own rules. This is a mess, but it's a good mess.

Going back to Derry stirred something in Richie’s memory he hadn’t known was there. He couldn’t identify it, couldn’t put his finger on what exactly he had been missing for so long, but it was there. It was long hours of meetings spent sketching bony, boyish hands on his papers, intricate curls of dark hair, a pair of eyes with a permanent sadness to them. It was the impulse bought book on Jewish history, the heavily annotated sections of the Old Testament in his Bible, the curiosity of faith always present in his heart. It was the memory of a child’s voice crying out, hurt and abandoned, yet never alone. 

Richie sat at the table with his napkin folded carefully in his lap, staring at his fingers twisted together atop his menu. He was the first one to the restaurant, nauseous and trembling, shaking his leg to dispel some of the horrific anxiety bubbling throughout his body. Mike had told him to go explore Derry, see what he remembered, but one look at the movie theater alone sent him spiraling down a tunnel of images and sickening dry heaves. So he’d gone back to his hotel and talked himself down until it was time to meet. 

The others trickled in slowly, one by one, until they were almost all present. Mike smiled and said they were just waiting for Stan, politely catching the waiter to order another round of drinks. Stan. Yeah, Richie remembered Stan, he thought. They used to be good friends, despite Richie’s mom’s initial disapproval at his befriending a Jewish kid. Eventually, though, she came to like Stan almost more than she liked Richie. Yeah, he thought, he remembered being best friends with Stan when they were younger. 

They talked and laughed for a while, Ben staring at Bev, Bev staring at Bill, and Bill staring at the grain of the table. Richie was in the middle of a half-hearted joke when Mike began smiling toward the entrance to the restaurant, waved, and crashed Richie’s world to a halt. 

Richie remembered Stanley Uris. 

As Stan walked to the table, mouth kept carefully straight, he kept his eyes downward, at his feet or the floor or the chair he pulled from the table. He finally looked up at Mike and flashed a pained, toothless smile. He apologized for being late, told them there had been trouble at the hotel he’d checked into, that the drive from Atlanta had been a nightmare, that he’s surprised he made it back to Derry alive. His laughs were awkward and forced, his eyes never lifting for more than a few seconds, and never landing on Richie. Halfway through their dinner, Richie began to think Stan was deliberately avoiding him altogether. 

When Mike started explaining to them that It was back, that they needed to fulfill their promise, Richie stared at Stan. He’d grown up, obviously, and something in him felt blessed to be able to see it. Richie watched as the face he’d known as a child, now older, morphed through horror and panic the same way it used to. His eyes closed, as if it would steady him, and he bowed his head. 

At the end of the night, they called cabs and left the restaurant. As Richie was about to make his own call for a taxi, he spotted Stan lingering close by, but it felt oceans away. He was almost looking at Richie, landing somewhere near his shoulders, mouth parted ever so slightly, as if ready to speak. 

Hanging the phone back on the receiver, Richie said, “Happy to be back, Stan?” It was meant to be a joke, but from the look on Stan’s face, it had come off too thick with emotion and longing. He felt desperate, on the verge of begging Stan to look him in the eyes, to speak to him, to let him touch him.

Instead, Stan’s eyes flitted back to the sidewalk, and Richie felt his heart deflate. “No, actually,” he said quietly, stunning Richie with the timbre of his voice. “This is getting to be one of the worst decisions I’ve ever made, I think.”

There was nothing inside Richie with the ability to joke. There was no way to make light of this. They were walking to their graves and Stan knew it. His eyes were still cast to the ground, and Richie’s desperation turned to something broken. “Well, I’m glad you’re here, Stan. I don’t think I could do this without you.” As though it were the magic password, Richie’s words made Stan’s eyes snap up to his, and something awful and wonderful and endlessly terrifying unfurled itself in Richie’s chest. Oh, he thought, this is dangerous.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

A long pause passed between them, but Stan’s eyes never left Richie’s. They were too far apart for Richie to see them properly, but he could remember with stunning clarity the flecks of chestnut in the seas of deep brown that were Stan’s eyes. They were deceptively dark, but Richie knew from years of looking at them that they were so much more than they appeared. He knew there was a trio of light freckles beneath his left eye, that the tip of his nose had a dip in it, that his lips were always chapped in the middle. Richie could remember it all as though he hadn’t been away from Stan for almost thirty years, as though he saw him every day, as though he woke to this face in the mornings and slept to them at night. 

Finally, there was too much. Too many things unsaid, too many memories resurfaced, too many thoughts and feelings and _God_, all he wanted was to feel Stan’s skin. “I missed you,” he said instead. 

Stan, as though he couldn’t find words to reply, simply nodded. After a beat, he asked, “Where are you staying? I could drive you.” He dangled his keys in the air. 

“Motel 6.”

“Me, too.” Jerking his head to the side, Stan lead the way to the car. His car was relatively new, in good condition, and impeccably clean. The ride to the motel was quick, but it felt so long, milliseconds stretching in the front seat of the Buick while the rest of the world went on in real time. Richie couldn’t think of a single thing, blissfully dissociated from his body, eyes fixed on Stan’s fingers wrapped around the steering wheel. 

The car slowed to a stop and the engine died at the flick of Stan’s wrist. They got out of the car, Stan moving to take a neat black suitcase from the trunk of the sedan before turning to the room he must have rented, digging into his pockets for the key. 

“Wanna come to my room? Have a beer or two?” The words escaped Richie’s mouth without any recollection of how they’d even formed. Stan turned back once more, eyes trained on the collar of Richie’s coat. 

“Yeah,” Stan said after a while. “Okay. Let me drop this in my room.”

Once inside Richie’s motel room, Stan sat awkwardly at the foot of the bed, hands clasped politely in his lap, eyes staring at his thumbnails. Richie pulled two beers from the six pack he’d bought at the convenience store next to the motel, knowing he’d need them. The labels were dull, sporting a turtle with a smile on its face, lounging under an equally smiling sun. He handed one to Stan and sat beside him, a good few inches between them. They felt like leagues of ocean instead of less than a foot of fabric and dead air. 

“It feels like we never left,” Stan said quietly. His brows furrowed. “Obviously things are…different now, but it’s like there was never a pause. We’ve come back and we’re the same.” Stan’s expression was pained, like he hated being back with them, and Richie understood, forgave him for it. Just because Stan had never left his mind, even when he didn’t know it, didn’t mean Stan had felt the same. “I just can’t help but think that we’re the same kids…who couldn’t beat It before.”

A deep fear turned in Richie at that. What if they couldn’t beat It? What if they _were_ still those kids? Richie’s chest felt rotten, like something had crawled in there and died, left to decompose and spread its misfortune to his lungs, his bones, his heart. “Well,” Richie laughed, forced and tight, “we know Ben’s still the same. Couldn’t keep his eyes off Bev the whole dinner.”

Stan cracked a smile, showing some of his straight, white teeth. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure everyone was looking at her.”

“Well, we were all in love with Bev back then,” Richie said. “It makes sense.”

“I wasn’t.” Richie jerked his head to look at Stan, whose eyes still trained on his own fingers, twisting and picking at the cuticles. After a moment, Stan looked slowly up, locking gazes with Richie and standing his ground. “It was never her…for me.”

“Stan.” Richie’s voice was tight, too many things trying to escape his throat at once, emotion, bile, sound. He wanted so badly to reach out, to take those hands he’d filled sketchbooks with, to hold them close to his heart and breathe his life into the soft skin covering gracefully curved bones. 

“I almost killed myself,” Stan said, voice dull. “I didn’t want to come back, but I didn’t want to break our promise. So I was going to kill myself.” 

Richie’s stomach lurched and he tightened his hands into fists on his knees. The thought of Stan dead made his whole body go cold. The thought that the night might have gone differently, that Mike wouldn’t have waited for Stan, because he already knew he wouldn’t be there. Or maybe they wouldn’t have known and waited for Stan only to have an empty seat the whole night. Maybe they would’ve gotten a call while they waited, telling Mike that Stan wouldn’t be coming, that he would never go anywhere ever again. A gravestone with _Stanley Uris_, the date _1946-1985_ etched neatly below it. 

“Immediately after Mike called…I drew myself a bath. I was going to cut my wrists,” Stan went on. His eyes were vacant, staring far away. “I got in and I had the razors, but I just…couldn’t do it. Something was holding me back.”

“Maybe you didn’t want to die.”

“Then I wouldn’t have come here,” Stan laughed. It was more incredulous than anything, something painful and abused in it. “I didn’t care about dying, I just…” He lifted his eyes to Richie’s once more, and something in him crumbled. 

“I’m so glad you didn’t, Stanley,” he whispered. “I need you here with me.”

The pause between them was long but not uncomfortable. Richie found solace in the watery light of Stan’s eyes, the stubble growing from this morning’s shave, the faint scent of cologne wafting from Stan’s clothes. Despite the full twenty four hour drive from Atlanta, Stan still looked impeccable, smelled fresh and kept his manner calm. The only tell he had was the terror in his eyes when he met Richie’s gaze. The silence brought the memory of a dream he had every few years, of a clear summer’s day laying in the grass, clean air and a smooth breeze pushing mosquitoes to the other side of town. Next to him was a young man, eyes closed and hands folded behind his head, mouth lax and sweet. His curls danced in the wind and Richie’s hand reached out to twirl one around his finger, delighting in the small smile from the boy next to him, his eyes still closed. Richie never noticed, but as the years went on, the boy had grown into a man. Before he’d ever realized it, Stan had aged with him, even in his dreams. 

For a split second, Richie wondered if it was It that had given him dreams of Stan, if It had always been with him, tormenting him for what he couldn’t have. Could It reach that far when It was starving and dormant? Then, Richie realized It could never have managed what his dreams had given him. An entity embodying and feeding off of hatred could never capture the pure love in Stan’s expression when he was content, could never get perfectly the arch of Stan’s nose, could never make Richie feel the things Stan had always made him feel. No, he decided, the dreams weren’t from It. They were a representation of just how strong his feelings for Stan had always been, that they could conquer the years apart and the forgetting caused by leaving Derry. Only Stan could do that. 

“I was never in love with Bev,” Richie said carefully. His hand twitched before he forced himself to reach out, to take Stan’s soft, cool hand in his own. The contact made his palm spark with a boyish delight. “Not really. It was never her for me either.” He broke their eye contact to watch Stan swallow. Flicking back up, his eyes burned gently into Stan’s, all consuming and ever so tender. “It’s always been you. Always.”

Stan’s eyes snapped shut, lips and brows pinching together in what could have been mistaken for pain. But Richie knew better. It was disbelief, hope forced back to his stomach. It was finally hearing everything you’ve ever needed to hear and still feeling as though it wasn’t true. “Richie.”

“Stan,” Richie whispered, “I love you.”

Every drawing he’d ever done of Stan’s hands, his hair, his eyes; every book on Judaism or Hebrew he’d bought without knowing it was for Stan; every dream, every memory, every hallucination of the boy he’d known and loved or the man he had in front of him; it all crashed through his body. When he saw Stan’s chest jerk and a lone tear slip straight form his cheek to his pants, Richie knew Stan was the same, loved him even through the years apart and forgotten. Hooking his free hand over Stan’s cheek, he guided their faces together, leaning so their foreheads touched and their breaths mingled. His heart shivered and jumped, feeling some hyperbolic form of relief, of comfort and contentment rush over his shoulders and his spine. 

When Richie kissed Stan, he reckoned it was the gentlest thing he’d ever done. He held Stan’s face and pushed their lips to touching, keeping them there for just a moment before releasing the kiss. They breathed together and Richie smiled lightly, thinking that, even though they were most likely knocking on death’s door, they could have this. After decades of waiting, they could finally have what they didn’t understand or know they needed when they were kids. 

Suddenly, Stan surged forward, pulling at Richie’s shirt and yanking him closer, forcing their bodies to touch from shoulder to knee, taking Richie’s mouth once more and consuming it. He gasped, “_God,_” weakly against Richie’s lips, pouring himself into every slow, yet calculated movement. Richie could feel Stan’s desperation, his choking need for touch, for them to make up for lost time, and he wanted to tell Stan that it was okay, he was there, and he wasn’t going anywhere. 

Stan pulled back, whispering, “I love you, Richie.”

Richie, overwhelmed, feeling his heartbeat in every part of his body, shuddered out a breath and pressed his forehead to the sweetly warmed skin of Stan’s neck, letting his hands rest on Stan’s hips. His thumbs pressed into the bones there over slacks, turning his head to paint sloppy kisses onto Stan’s neck, collarbones, pushing the collar of his shirt aside. Stan’s breath stopped in his throat, Adam’s apple bobbing against Richie’s mouth, a harsh sound escaping when Richie began using his teeth. Hands twisted in Richies hair and Stan started to lean back, pulling Richie over him.

“Richie.”

Richie hummed against Stan’s collarbone in response, preoccupied with worshipping the skin available to him. He wanted to take Stan’s shirt off. He wanted to see Stan naked. He wanted to touch him, kiss him, make him tremble. He wanted to love him. 

“If you don’t lose your clothes right now, I’m going to explode.”

Shooing Stan farther up the bed, Richie sat back on his haunches long enough to rip his thick henley over his shoulders before moving back over Stan. His hands shoved beneath Stan’s shirt, pushing until Stan sat up to let Richie pull it off, revealing flushed pale skin. Despite his constant exposure to the California sun, Richie wasn’t much tanner, observing his own hands over the skin of Stan’s chest. 

“Gorgeous,” he murmured, thumbing just beneath Stan’s pecs. 

A hand on his shoulder pushed him onto his back, fingers moving deftly over the button and zipper of his slacks. Stan’s eyes held a gentle determination as he shimmied Richie’s pants off of his legs. His palms were warm over Richie’s thighs, inching for a moment under the bottom of his briefs before skirting back down. Richie felt like steam was coming out of his ears at the sight of Stan, so normally fastidious and proper, coy and hungry. It was one of the most erotic things Richie had ever witnessed. When Stan flicked his sharp gaze to Richie’s growing arousal, he visibly preened, humming and leaning down to kiss at Richie’s hips. 

“Stan, shit,” Richie breathed. “If you touch me I’ll fucking come.”

Heat washed over Richie’s groin in the form of an exhale, Stan shuddering out a quiet, “Good,” before nosing at his bulge. 

Richie groaned low and forced his hips still, afraid of scaring Stan away, losing his closeness. Fingers curled under the waistband of his briefs and pulled, slowly exposing him to the cool night air of the motel room. Richie hoped he wasn’t shaking. Instead of touching him like Richie thought he would, Stan bypassed his erection completely, moving to mouth at his hips and inner thighs, sending dull sparks of pleasure through his body like firecrackers, ricocheting around him before ending directly inside his groin. His hands reached down blindly, as though he couldn’t just look down, and grasped Stan’s hands to ground himself. 

Closing his eyes reverently, feeling dark marks being sucked into the skin of his thighs, Richie ran his thumbs over the knuckles of Stan’s hands, delighting in their elegant structure. He whispered Stan’s name, choking on it when Stan’s tongue ran over him, finally, before swallowing him down. He squeezed Stan’s hands, unsure if he was about to fly away or sink down into the sheets. Stan squeezed back, humming against him, and Richie’s back bowed and a low sound punched from his gut. Suddenly, the hot wetness of Stan’s mouth was too much, and he was rocketing toward his orgasm, desperately warning Stan before his body erupted in shivers. 

It was probably the longest orgasm he’d ever had, especially given how little Stan had done to him, but it left him gasping and embarrassed anyway. Carefully, Stan stayed on him until he was finished coming, pulling off of him and opening his mouth to breathe and reveal that Richie’s release had disappeared. Still whirling around in his own head, Richie realized Stan had swallowed it all and breathed out hard. Pulling on Stan’s hands, bringing him to his mouth, he whispered, “Come here.”

He could taste his own release in Stan’s mouth, unsure of whether it was the grossest or hottest thing he’d ever experienced. Instead of dwelling on it, he began pushing Stan’s pants and briefs from his body, taking him in one hand while the other rubbed up and down his spine. Stan’s eyes slipped closed and the air inside him whooshed out, his hips pushing slowly into the firm grip of Richie’s hand. 

“Come on, Stan, let me see you,” Richie panted. 

Richie’s words a hair trigger, Stan cursed sharply and his abdomen tightened, hips stuttering and breath hard. Richie felt warmth spill over his knuckles and onto his stomach. Lovingly, he stroked Stan through it and pulled him closer, letting Stan’s noises fall onto his tongue before pulling his hand away. Stan kissed Richie as he came down, pouring himself into it as he shook through the aftershocks. 

Quietly, they cleaned up with tissues on the nightstand and pulled each other close and naked, touching from nose to ankle, entwined like vines on a wall. Richie never looked away from the blurry image of Stan’s face, distorted from being so close, yet perfect as always. He rubbed his hand over Stan’s ribs and pressed his thumbs into the divots they created. Something in him felt so alive just to be touching Stan, to be near him. His body had longed for Stan even when his conscious mind had forgotten him, and it sang now that they were finally together. 

“Richie,” Stan whispered. It sounded edged, scared, child-like. “If we don’t make it –”

“No, don’t,” Richie begged. He didn’t want to think about It right now, only Stan and the pipe dream of having a future with him. “Please.”

“If we don’t make it,” Stan pushed on, eyes closed, brows pinched together, “I want you to know…I’m so glad I didn’t do it.” Richie’s stomach twisted at the reminder. Stan almost killed himself. A kiss brushed his lips. “Even if we die here, in Derry, just being with you was worth it. You’re worth everything.”

Richie took Stan’s mouth desperately. “I love you,” he said, almost a sob, “so fucking much. So much.” Stan nodded against his mouth, whispering his own confession into their kisses. Richie grabbed Stan’s face, pulling back to look him in the eyes. “Let’s have tonight. Stay. We can pretend…we’re not here to die.”

A pause stretched over them like a blanket, and Stan nodded, turning his face to press his mouth to Richie’s palm. “Okay.” 

**Author's Note:**

> What happened to their beers? Who knows.  
As usual, I'm moderating comments to keep from toxicity, but all other comments are welcome and will get approved! Thanks for reading!


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